A lie is still a lie

I am going to run, verbatim, an e-mail from a friend and my response, because I think they sum up both of our reactions to the Libby verdict and subsequent hand-wringing and spin. Bill e-mailed me Friday, but I was away for a few days (which is why I haven’t posted anything since Thursday). My response is from today.

Bill writes:

So when did I become a Law and Order Republican ??????

OK, so I know that I’m one of those few people that live in the ‘fact based world’, but where does Krauthammer, Novak, etc live ????? I mean, not even to try to make a bigger meaning out of the Libby trial, but to boil it down to its simplicities. During an FBI investigation, and testimony before a grand jury, and it appears that he lied, so he was charged with lying and obstruction of justice. There was a trial, and people deliberated for a long time, and they decided that he didn’t ‘mis-remember’ or forgot, he lied with a specific purpose. Now you have pundits and Washington-insider reporters (if you can call them that) trying to spin this into something that it’s not. I think Fitzgerald put it best in his closing in saying that Libby’s lying is important because it did not allow the criminal justice proceeding to proceed. Yes, Libby’s lying doesn’t directly go to the reason for the original point of the investigation, but that investigation was impaired directly because of his lying. The way these pundits carry on is that this is some big miscarriage of justice, but the only thing I heard from the jurors was that they felt frustrated that Rove or Cheney wasn’t being charged, which then sends us back to Libby lying (and of course the jail sentence or threat of doesn’t have the normal effect that is does, as you now have members of the media calling for a pardon).

My response:

Isn’t it interesting that the same people calling for Clinton’s head because he lied under oath over a sex act are now downplaying Libby’s lying under oath tied to an intelligence coverup? Forget the issue of degree (Clinton’s lie had nothing to do with war or the death of thousands of American soldiers). You can argue that he didn’t lie, that his memory was faulty — a stretch — but to argue that it is a miscarriage shows how completely distorted by partisan politics Washington’s institutional memory and code of ethics have become.

Here is a question: If you are Bush and Rove, do you pardon Libby now hoping that time will soften its impact? Or do you allow him to serve some jail time and pardon him after the 2008 election?

Anyone who thinks that Rove isn’t considering this knows nothing about Washington.

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A doomed mall?

The list is getting too long to follow, the changes having made only moderate difference, leaving us with a still-failing shopping center.

The South Brunswick Mall is losing another anchor store — Bob’s, which had become a favorite of mine.

Consider the history of closings: Channel, Rickel, Jamesway, Grand Union, Rumbleseats, Ground Round, Bloomingdale Discount Furniture, Pizza Hut, Macy’s — and these are just the major players. We’ve also witnessed a long and unfortunate list of smaller stores bite the dust, including The Little Professor Book Store (where I had worked occasionally while in grad school and when I started out as a reporter).

The closings are a reminder that population growth does not, in and of itself, guarantee business. In this case, the mall has been weighed down by a poor design (it can’t be seen from the highway, for instance, and has a dopey traffic circulation plan) and failed mix of merchants. The hope when Bob’s and Home Depot opened was that they’d bring the shoppers in; the reality is that they have not been the kinds of draws needed.

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Another dumb music list

Eric Alterman mentions this list on his Altercation blog. My question is what kind of criteria might they have come up with that would place Carole King’s very good Tapestry album above Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited (for that matter, that could place anything above that album aside from maybe Revolver, Rubber Soul or Bringin’ It All Back Home).

And this doesn’t take into account the inexplicable placement of Born to Run at number 14 or the exclusion of any hip hop (Eminem comes in at 28? What about Public Enemy or Run DMC?) from the Top 20 or the ranking of Shania Twain as the “most influencial and popular” country album on the list (what would Johnny, June, Merle, Willie, Waylon, Loretta, Tammy, etc. have to say?).

I guess the key to understanding it is that it “was developed by NARM, the National Association of Recording Merchandisers” — i.e., the people who view music in terms of units and not art.

Alterman offers this comment, with which I won’t argue (though I do abhor violence):

The less said about it, the better. (In a just country, these people would be taken out and shot …)

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It could happen here

The dissident novelists of the former Eastern Bloc — writers like Milan Kundera and Josef Skvoercky — often took as their theme the manner in which history was distorted by the communist regimes, the way officials who had fallen from favor would be airbrushed from the official narrative.

I wonder what they would make of this:

In December 1989, one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, President George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Malta and, in the words of a Soviet spokesman, “buried the cold war at the bottom of the Mediterranean.”

The Russian transcript of that momentous summit was published in Moscow in 1993. Fourteen years later American historians are still waiting for their own government to release a transcript.

The reason for this is a 2001 executive order issued by President George W. Bush that gave

sitting presidents the power to delay the release of papers indefinitely, while extending the control of former presidents, vice presidents and their families

and

changed the system from one that automatically released documents 30 days after a current or former president is notified to one that withholds papers until a president specifically permits their release.

The Bush system has given working historians fits and seems more suited to the closed societies of the old Soviet satellite states — which is consistent with the Bush administration’s devotion to secrecy and its attempts to broaden the powers of the chief executive. Thomas S. Blanton, executive director of an independent research institute called the National Security Archive at George Washington University,

said he believes the Bush White House is primarily concerned with reversing what it sees as an erosion of presidential power after Watergate. “It has the added advantage of giving the incumbent a lot more control over history,” he said.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is reviewing legislation that would overturn the executive order — it could go to the full House next week for a vote. The it would need Senate approval — and a signature for the man looking to limit access, meaning the legislation is likely to fade away along with our democracy.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

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